"Starting today, users in the United States and UK will be able to add that they're organ donors to their Timelines, and if they're not organ donors, they can find links to official organ donation registries and instantly enroll." A commendable effort, but for some reason, I find it quite creepy, too. What if you leave your Facebook open and someone enlists you? On a related note - if you're not registered as a donor yet, please consider doing so. It might save someone's life.

That issue of Netherland citizens having to go to another country to get proper health care sucks, but that's another issue. I don't know the background of that so I can't comment on it.

It just illustrates that the organ shortage is much less of a problem in opt-out countries.

On the other hand it's disturbing to think that due to this opt-out scheme not all possible avenues of treatment might be attempted because of keeping organs viable or because someone privileged is needing them now (we're all equal, just some are more equal than others).

I think this is unrelated to the opt-in/opt-out situation. There is already a priority list for urgent situations, e.g. people needing a liver right now or they'll die.

The best way to have a healthy social community is to have people properly educated and informed and give consent.

In an utopian paradise, yes I agree. However, real world facts show otherwise. The conflict with the Netherlands is just an example.

People are not stupid, if things are explained clearly enough, anyone sane and reasonable is able to understand and do an informed decision.

Unfortunately they are. No matter how hard you try to explain and convince them, many people simply do not pay attention or do not want to think about it.

On the issue of trusting the government, if it weren't for all the competent, honest and truthful governments all over europe and the world we wouldn't be in the economic mess we're in. I'd say this answers that question.

A government has many aspects. They perform well in some areas and bad in others. I'd rather not throw the good parts out. I won't trust them with my private information, but I don't see how they can screw up organ donations and make it worse than the default "no donation at all".

Rather than throwing it all away, I think the right thing to do is to either cut off dead branches or fix them. Yes they screwed up in this crisis, but so did private companies/banks (probably even more so). Politicians must trust advise from others. Mostly that advise comes from private companies and institutes. Sometimes they get it wrong, but what would the alternative be? Getting advise from the gut? Or do you want them to do nothing and see how the economy implodes? At least we can learn from this for the next time something similar happens